Stride Toward Freedom
Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memoir of the Montgomery bus boycott. More
Social Change: Civil Rights
Beginning with This Is My Story (1937), Harper & Brothers published many works by Eleanor Roosevelt that promoted civil rights and the need for government action, including This I Remember (1949), On My Own (1958), and Tomorrow Is Now (1963). More
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez drew on his childhood experiences in Colombia when crafting the story of the fictional Buendía family in the classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. More
1958: Collins publishes the first English translation of Doctor Zhivago…
Collins publishes the first English translation of Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. More
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
A child’s perspective as a refugee during the rise of Nazism; now a modern classic. More
Geronimo Johnson
I write to unread what has been written about me in error and with malice. More
Social Change: Thomas Nast, Illustrator
Illustrator Thomas Nast first made his name documenting the Civil War in all its gruesome reality, but he is best known for developing the political cartoon form and our modern depictions of Santa Claus. More
1863: Harper & Brothers takes a clear stand in favor of abolition
Harper & Brothers takes a clear stand in favor of abolition with the publication of Fanny Kemble’s Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839. More
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), a story about growing up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, was originally an entry for a Harper & Brothers memoir contest. More
1949: Harper & Brothers publishes the Pulitzer-Prize winning Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks…
Harper & Brothers publishes Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, which wins the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and makes Brooks the first African American writer to receive the award. More
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
One of Harper & Brothers’ most famous and influential authors was Aldous Huxley, who signed with the publisher in 1927 and published his first book, Texts and Pretexts, with them in 1932. More
1848: Harper & Brothers publishes the first American editions of the Brontë’s works
Harper & Brothers publishes the first American editions of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. More
The Gulag Archipelago
Named “the best nonfiction book of the 20th century” by Time magazine. More
Rita Williams-Garcia
My childhood reading helped to build me from the inside. More
1943: Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is published…
Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a story about growing up poor in turn-of-the-century Brooklyn, shines a light on first- and second-generation Americans living in poverty. More
1973: William Collins and Sons secures the rights to Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago…
William Collins and Sons secures the rights to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, an eye-opening work that exposes in startling detail the horrors of the communist regime in Russia. More
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans, born in 1819, led a turbulent life that often broke with Victorian social norms. More
James Harper, Mayor Of New York City
With corruption rampant in New York City politics, the newly formed American Republican Party convinced James Harper, one of the brothers who had founded J. & J. Harper in 1817, to run for mayor. More
1937: Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God is published…
J. B. Lippincott publishes Zora Neale Hurston’s masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God. More
Black Boy
A powerful and eloquent autobiography that has sold more than a million copies since publication. More
1938: Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection…
Harper & Brothers publishes Richard Wright’s debut story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children. More
One Hundred Years of Solitude
This landmark of magical realism sparked a wave of interest in Central and South American literature. More
Sympathy telegram to Coretta Scott King following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
The day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 5, 1968), Harper honorary director Cass Canfield sent this telegram... More
Periodicals: Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s New Monthly and Harper’s Bazaar
The Harper brothers consistently sought ways to reach more readers with less expensive publications, and in 1850 they revolutionized the concept of the modern literary magazine with Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. More
Monster
Winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award and the Coretta Scott King Award. More
Publishing Firsts: The Historical Romance Genre
At the time of its publication in 1972, nothing like Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower had ever been published. More
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Major nineteenth-century English novel that challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. More